Mix up your morning routine, and get your greens, to boot! Even if yesterday’s green drink wasn’t your kind of brew, below there are nine other great kale drink recipes that might be.
If you want to get more greens, drinking them is a great, fast way to do it–and if you want to do it with kale, here’s a little fresh inspiration to mix up your routine! Below, get inspired with these 10 great kale drinks from all over the Internet, each offering a fresh, new way to up your veggie intake at home.
(PS! Concerned about drinking raw kale? See note at bottom of post.)
1. An Everyday Kale Drink to Try / Go Eat Your Bread with Joy
This recipe, pictured above, just posted to this site yesterday. It’s dark green, frothy and earthy, with a kick of sweetness and spice. Also, you may already have the eight main ingredients called for in it on hand. Drink this one along with me this week! Pro tip: add extra cayenne for a satisfying, comforting burn for a sore throat.
2. My Favorite Green Smoothie Recipe / Build Your Bite
Described as tasting like a tropical smoothie, this beverage combines citrus, banana and peaches with kale and ginger. Why try it: Blogger Joy Shull says she could drink it every day and not get sick of it.
3. Sweet Kale Lemonade Beauty Juice / Candice Kumai
All it takes is kale, spinach, cucumber, apple and a lemon to make what Candice Kumai calls “beauty juice.” I’ll be honest enough to say the short ingredient list plus titling worked to woo me. Why try it: It’s called beauty juice; aren’t you curious?
4. Mango Ginger Kale Green Smoothie / Minimalist Baker
Inspired by a drink at Jamba Juice, blogger Dana Shultz came up with this sweet green smoothie, a blend of everything in its name, plus peaches, citrus juice, water and optional ice and maple syrup. Why try it: If you’ve been a fan of Jamba Juice, now’s your chance to have it at home.
5. Delicious Kale Smoothie / Happy Kitchen Rocks
Adding a banana makes this kale smoothie a creamier, thicker version of a green drink. This variety from Happy Kitchen Rocks also includes peanut butter, maple syrup, lemon juice and almond milk. Why make it: If you want a traditional smoothie feel with kale added in, here’s a template.
6. The Best Kale Smoothie That Tastes Like Ice Cream (!) / The Blender Girl
According to Tess Masters, aka the Blender Girl, this kale smoothie recipe is the most popular recipe on her site. “I get 500 emails a week about it,” she says in the post introduction. With social proof like that, you don’t need me to give you my take, but I tried it in my kitchen just the same (sweet and creamy, fun to drink!). So what, exactly, does it take to make kale taste like your favorite summer treat? Combining it with dates, cashews, bananas and ginger, Tess says, for “the holy grail of kale.” A few pro tips: soak your cashews ahead of time (or skip it, like I did) and swap date paste for the dates to skip the soak beforehand.
7. Supercharged Kale-Avocado Smoothie / MyRecipes.com
Sweetened only with two Medjool dates, this smoothie packs a whole lot of green food into a single glass. According to Jamie Vespa, MS, RD , it also delivers “one-third your daily goal of vitamin A and 100% of vitamin K.” Why try it: get those vitamins!
8. Drink Your Greens Smoothie / Gourmande in the Kitchen
Featuring three greens, pineapple, lemon juice and coconut milk, this recipe yields a smooth, creamy concoction that packed with nutrients. Fun bonus: the pineapple not only sweetens this drink, but it adds powerful enzymes that aid digestion and help with inflammation.
9. Gwyneth’s Green Juice / Savor Home
Originally from Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2013 book, “It’s All Good,” this simple recipe posted by Tiffany Scales of Savor Home is another fun take on kale lemonade. It calls for five leaves of the green (stems removed), a chopped apple, a knob of ginger and a peeled, seeded lemon. Bonus: it comes with instructions for making either in a juicer or a blender at home.
10. Parsley, Kale and Berry Smoothie / Bon Appetit
Heavy on the parsley and sweetened with a banana and a cup of frozen berries, this drink from Bon Appetit has an average 3.5 stars from almost 200 reviewers. Why it’s interesting: If you’ve made smoothies with blueberries, you know they tend to overpower green hues–not here! Make it to see for yourself.
Editor’s note on raw kale consumption:
Despite all the nutrients in kale discussed in yesterday’s post, eating (or drinking) kale raw is not a matter without controversy. According to editor Holly Van Hare of The Daily Meal and blogger and author Carrie Vitt of Deliciously Organic, for example, raw kale consumption can impact the way your thyroid works, causing various hormonal irregularities. Citing research from Oregon State University, Van Hare says, “[T]hese vegetables contain both progoitrin, a compound that can interfere with thyroid hormone synthesis, and thiocyanate ions, which can crowd out the iodine your thyroid needs. After eating an extremely large amount of raw kale, you could experience hormonal irregularities that lead to fluctuations in blood sugar, weight, and overall metabolic health.”
That said, most experts, including the two referenced above, agree that the problem comes from large amounts of raw kale consumption, not the occasional green drink or salad.
“You’d have to eat an exorbitant amount of raw kale or other raw cruciferous vegetables for this to have an affect on a healthy person’s thyroid,” says Cooking Light‘s Food and Nutrition Director, Brierley Horton, MS, RD. “The benefit of eating these vegetables usually outweighs any potential negatives.”
In other words, as long as you don’t have a thyroid problem or eat your weight in kale each day, you probably don’t need to be concerned.
buuut! wait! before you run with that information:
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